Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Latest search for Schroedinger cats

NewScientist mag reports:
Try to imagine a tiny ball sitting on one fingertip yet also on your shoulder at the same instant. Are you struggling? Most of us can’t conceive of an object being in two places at once – yet physicists have just demonstrated the effect over a distance of half a metre, smashing previous records.

It’s an example of superposition, the idea that an object can exist in two quantum states at the same time. This persists until it is observed, causing a property called its wave function to collapse into one state or the other. The same principle allows Schrödinger’s cat to be both dead and alive inside a box until you open the lid.
That is quite a little magic trick. You announce that you have made something in two places at once, but there is a catch -- if you look at it, then it reverts to being in just one place.

The article is kind enuf to supply some skepticism:
But it may be less of a breakthrough than it seems. In 2013, Hornberger helped devise a “weirdness scale” that scores experiments according to how far they show quantum effects extending into the everyday world. Kasevich’s work extends the distance scale but compromises in other ways, so scores about the same as previous attempts, says Hornberger. That means a true Schrödinger’s cat is still far from being realised.
We need a weirdness scale for overhyped science news story. +1 for a phony experiment. +1 for phony theory. +1 for some bogus interpretation to the result.

I don't want to be too harsh, as this is just a bogus interpretation.

1 comment:

  1. There is always a monster under the bed until you look or you grow past the age of five.

    ReplyDelete